What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
I need to ask myself this question far more often. The past couple of weeks I allowed this fear of failure to get in my way. I made all kinds of excuses and talked myself out of doing my project for class. The only person I was hurting was me. Why did I let this fear of failure take over? I spent Monday & Tuesday of this week working on the project and aside from a much deeper belief that CSS was created to torment me, it was nothing. It was the easy-peasy thing I KNEW it would be, but still, that fear stopped me in my tracks. I turned in my assignment before checking it in other browsers. Luckily IE is the only one it doesn’t work in but if you’re still using IE you’re an idiot anyway and should die a terrible horrible painful death. Seriously people, grow some balls, install Chrome or FireFox or Opera, your life will be better for it. TRUST ME I’m a web developer in training!
Back to the topic of fear…
Fear the BEHOLDER!
Back to the fear and failure topic… We all suffer from fear. What we fear is this thing that in our minds becomes this huge monstrous beast that will torment you and tear you limb from limb and eat your entrails while you take your final breaths. But the reality is never nearly as awful as what we create out of fear. Overcoming the fear is the hardest part. Realizing that what we’re afraid of will never be nearly as bad as what we create in our minds about the situation is really hard. Once you let go of the fear, you can move forward and as you take those first steps, you realize it was never going to be as bad as you were imagining. Why do we constantly do this to ourselves? Why do we create these monsters that stop us from finding joy and happiness? Why do we keep holding ourselves back? Are we really afraid of success? Is being happy such a terrible prospect? Don’t you think you deserve to be happy and successful?
Imagine a hero!
The mighty paladin rolls a crit and gets max damage!
Your imagination is a powerful thing, like all powerful things you need to use it for good. Instead of creating a monster, create a mighty hero, a vanquisher of evil. This warrior will fight to the death on your behalf. He has no fear. Imagine the most awesome things that will happen with this warrior fighting for you. Don’t focus on what can go wrong, focus on what WILL go RIGHT. Focus on what will be amazing as you move forward. Don’t focus on failure, focus on success. Feel that success in the fiber of your being. Embrace that success and make it real. Ask yourself: what would you do if you knew you could not fail? When you focus on success, in the end, you can only succeed because you wont give up until you do.
I would love nothing more than to never use IE again. However, it is still the standard browser for most businesses (certainly law firms). We’re about to implement a huge web-based app firmwide and guess what? It only works with IE. I constantly have to ask the vendor to check how different pages work in other browsers because many individuals will be using the new app and they *don’t* use IE.
Otherwise, I completely agree with your post about fear. I think one of the “fears” I have is that I won’t be as good as others. If I never try, then I can’t really prove or disprove that notion. Silly but true.
Do you know the song “If I Were Brave” by Jana Stanfield? It’s great inspiration for letting go of the fear. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF5V2PEujqs
Nikki, yeah I know we’ll never get rid of IE, but one can hope, and pray and educate. I’d really like it if people would move away from it on a personal level. That whole part of the post was more of a tirade.
As for fear – yeah we all suffer from it in one way or another. When I get home I’m totally going to check out that song!